The Age of Kali (17 page)

Bahveri felt that reporting the incident would help no one and only cause further trouble; she also correctly suspected that the police would be completely unsympathetic to a lower-caste woman lodging a complaint against a prominent local figure. Yet even she was surprised at the degree of hostility she encountered. The Jaipur police said that the matter was of no concern to them, and that she should report it to the police headquarters in Bassi, the district in which the rape actually took place. Once she had got to Bassi, four hours’ bus ride away, the police there made it clear from the start that they disbelieved her story, treating her, she says, ‘as if I were a prostitute’ and keeping her waiting in the station for three days before getting around to giving her even the most basic medical examination.

Bahveri Devi now believes that the delay was deliberate, as according to many authorities, sperm tests are no longer valid or accurate three days after intercourse. Moreover, despite a 1982 amendment to the Indian penal code which provides that the police should take it as a premise that a rape victim is telling the truth, and take the suspect in to custody as soon as the crime is reported, no attempt was made to arrest Badri Gujjar. Indeed, ten days passed before he was even questioned.

Badri Gujjar’s family have a very different version of the events of 22 September. According to the Gujjars an incident did take place on that day, but it was only a fight between the priest from the village temple and Bahveri Devi’s husband Mohan, over a cow which both claimed as their own. Mohan was getting the better of the priest when Badri’s nephew and brother-in-law passed by and intervened ‘because we could not bear to see a Brahmin being beaten up by Mohan, a
kumar
’. By the time they had finished with him, Mohan had been badly mauled.

I had gone over to Badri Gujjar’s house as soon as we left Bahveri Devi. It was a much bigger affair than Bahveri’s hut, made of cut stone rather than mud, with a shady verandah decorated with carved stone pillars. Outside, some twenty water-buffaloes were lined up by a byre; one of them was being milked by a servant girl. Most of the Gujjar menfolk were away, but Ram Sukhar, Badri’s nephew, was there, a lean, muscular farmer with a thick moustache, smoking his hookah on the verandah.

‘Badri wasn’t even here that day,’ said Ram Sukhar. ‘Nor was his son. They had both gone to Dosa on their tractor. Yes, I certainly helped protect our Pundit from Mohan, but Bahveri, she was nowhere to be seen. The first we heard about any rape was when the police came around and questioned us.’

‘But it is true that you were angry with her for interfering in your marriage ceremony?’

‘Certainly,’ he replied. ‘We all agree that a child-marriage is not proper, not ideal, but it saves us so much money if we marry all the girls at the same time. If not, we have to bear the expense of four separate marriage parties, and we cannot afford that – we are only a poor family. Bahveri Devi should have understood that. But
these
sathins
are very bad women. They are very bossy. Everything they say is wrong. Bahveri Devi had no business to send the police around at such a time. We had a reputation in this village. She has ruined that now.’

‘So did you try to seek revenge?’

‘No. But we did stop talking to her family. So did the other villagers. They said: “You have sullied the reputation of a good family.” It was because of that boycott that she made this accusation. She wanted to punish us for isolating her.’

‘But why would she make up a rape? It is the most humiliating thing a woman can admit to.’

‘What is Bahveri Devi’s reputation? What is her prestige? She is a
kumar
. And a whore. No one respects her. She has nothing to lose.’

‘And the village still supports you?’

‘Of course,’ said Ram Sukhar. ‘No one in the village believes Bahveri Devi’s lies. Not one person. When the police saw this, they agreed with us that she had made up the whole incident.’

The following day in Jaipur I talked to Pratab Singh Rathore, the Inspector General of Crime in the Jaipur police. He confirmed what Ram Sukhar had said.

‘Frankly we are 99.999 per cent certain that Bahveri Devi was not raped by these persons,’ he said, twirling a pencil in his fingers. ‘We have questioned everybody and made sperm tests, and on the basis of that evidence have dropped the case. There were traces of several different semen types in her sample, but none of these belonged to the accused. Nor, incidentally, did the sperm match with that of her husband.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I don’t think I have to spell it out,’ replied the Inspector General. ‘Ask anyone in the village about that woman’s reputation.’

‘So are you trying to imply that Bahveri Devi is not only a liar, she is also a slut?’

‘Those are your words,’ said the Inspector General. ‘Not mine.’

I had planned to write about Bahveri Devi in January 1993, when I first heard about the case and went over to Jaipur to investigate. But faced with the Inspector General’s claim to have scientific evidence that Badri Gujjar could not possibly have raped her, I dropped the story and put my notebooks in a bottom drawer. Initially there had been a wave of support for Bahveri Devi among Indian women’s groups, but following the publication of the Jaipur police report, the marches, the lobbying of MPs and the campaign all dried up.

So the case rested until May 1993, when Kavitha Srivastava returned from a year’s sabbatical in England. Kavitha was a social worker with the Jaipur Institute of Development Studies, and had known Bahveri Devi well since she first came to Jaipur to be trained as a
sathin
five years previously. She was in no doubt that a woman of Bahveri’s honesty and integrity would be quite incapable of making up a false rape allegation. As far as she was concerned, the whole case stank of caste and gender prejudice.

‘You see, rape is actually very common in Indian villages,’ she explained, ‘particularly the rape of lower-caste women. But because of the shame and stigma it goes largely unreported: in all of India, astonishingly, only four or five cases are reported each year. The victim knows she will be labelled for life; moreover, everyone around will encourage her to hush it up, as the stigma will be attached not only to her, but also to her family and to her village.
So in most cases women just hide such things, and if necessary go off and have an abortion.

‘This is why the village would not support Bahveri. They are angry that she has gone public and so brought disrepute to Batteri. Moreover, they are all terrified of the Gujjars. Badri is a powerful local politician, while his son Gyarsa is the
panch
of his
jati
, the head of all the Gujjars in the neighbouring eighty villages. With him rests the final decision on marriage, society and death for all the local Gujjars. If you fall out with him he can ostracise you. You won’t be allowed to smoke or eat or drink with anyone from the Gujjar community, and your children may not get the chance to get married.’

The more Kavitha investigated the case, the more she became convinced that the police had acted suspiciously, even improperly.

‘In a rape case, the penal code makes it clear that the accused should be arrested and the evidence examined by a court. It is not up to the police to start making moral judgements and announce that the victim is an immoral character who might or might not be telling lies. And why didn’t they arrest Badri Gujjar? The answer can only be that Badri was a prominent local politician, and that in Bassi District the Gujjars are incredibly powerful: the local MP is Rajesh Pilot, who is not only a Gujjar but also a cabinet minister in the Central Government. In 1993 a state election was due, and no party could win seats in the area if they alienated the Gujjar vote. I have absolutely no doubt that political pressure was put on the police both to delay the medical and to clear Badri.’

Kavitha believed that if Bahveri was not cleared, no
sathin
would ever be able to work in Rajasthan again, nor would any Rajasthani rape victim ever again dare to come out in the open and seek justice. It was no longer just a matter of clearing the name of one woman: the stakes were now far higher.

‘Four of us got together and made a solemn commitment to see the case through,’ said Kavitha. ‘We were aware that it might take as long as seven years to settle, as the appeals would take it from the Sessions Court to the High Court, and from there to the
Supreme Court. But we knew that if we didn’t see this one through we all might as well go home and pack our bags.’

After discussion, Kavitha and her supporters decided that their only hope was to create a political lobby to rival the influence of the Gujjars’. They rallied the women’s groups of India, and organised a new wave of marches and petitions and a series of articles in the press. On 27 September 1993, a year and five days after the alleged rape, Bahveri Devi’s supporters won their first victory when the Delhi Central Bureau of Investigation (the CBI) was finally forced to issue arrest warrants for the five accused. When the men disappeared from the village the CBI threatened to confiscate their property, and on 24 January 1994 all five gave themselves up to the police. A fortnight later, a second and even more important victory was won when the men’s bail applications were thrown out by Justice N.M. Tibrewal, the High Court judge who was hearing the case. In his summing-up he made it clear what he believed to have happened:

‘From the above details it is quite clear to me that Bahveri Devi was gang-raped, and that despite her appeals for help the local villagers did not come to her aid for fear of the accused.
Prima facie
it is a case of gang-rape which was done to take revenge against Bahveri for her success in preventing the child-marriage.’ The judge was also highly critical of the police response to the case, which he termed ‘highly dubious’.

So, a year later, at the end of February, Sanjeev and I again took a car down the dusty Rajasthani roads to talk to the inhabitants of Village Batteri.

This time none of the villagers insulted Bahveri Devi when we asked for directions; instead they politely pointed out the way without
comment. I remarked on this when we found Bahveri Devi on her verandah, again chopping up vegetables for her lunch.